Chancellor’s spring statement

[Cheesecakeandwineinasuitcase]

AIBU to think that today we are about to be hugely disappointed by what Rishi says in his spring statement and just to realise just how out of touch he is with the grim reality that normal people (I.e. not millionaire politicians) in the Uk face?

My prediction is that he won’t back down on the 1.25% increase in NI contributions that he is making people pay from April. There will be a paltry reduction in fuel duty (maybe a few pence if we are lucky - but that will easily be cancelled out within a few days as prices increase to compensate). Maybe he will reduce the duty on champagne this time or some other gimmicky sweetener (wasn’t it Prosecco last time?). He might raise the threshold from which people have to start paying tax but for most working families that won’t make a jot of difference.

So it feels like we are sitting ducks and that as time goes by more and more people end up really struggling.

[quote worriedatthistime]@Blossomtoes but yes why have they not been elected[/quote]
I’ve just bloody told you.

@Zilla1 am I reading this right? You're saying that for 4 years Tories were a junior partner to LD? Really?

@Zilla1 am I reading this right? You're saying that for 4 years Tories were a junior partner to LD? Really?

It was the other way round.

You’re such a wind up merchant @Zilla1 😉

I agree and at the same time someone has to pay for the past 2-3 years.
Its shit and I have no idea how we get out of this mess (we can't keep spending our way out of it but austerity doesn't work either).
Tax corporations and it'll just get passed onto customers anyway.
Interestingly, over the past two years people praised furlough, wat-out-to-help-out and the money give-aways that Sunak was offering. Now we have to pay it back and people are upset.

We don't get anything for nothing. There is always a catch. The public can't accept this or are stupidly thinking money grows on trees.

Very clever the LDs, the Conservatives took the heat but the LDs called the shots. Why did the public blame the LDs for their about face on student funding if the Conservatives called the shots. Not logical is it?

@Burgoo

I agree and at the same time someone has to pay for the past 2-3 years. Its shit and I have no idea how we get out of this mess (we can't keep spending our way out of it but austerity doesn't work either). Tax corporations and it'll just get passed onto customers anyway. Interestingly, over the past two years people praised furlough, wat-out-to-help-out and the money give-aways that Sunak was offering. Now we have to pay it back and people are upset.

We don't get anything for nothing. There is always a catch. The public can't accept this or are stupidly thinking money grows on trees.

You're falling into the trap that it had to be paid back very quickly.

It doesn't.

You can pay it back over 100 years if you want. Just like we did with war debt.

Sunak is choosing to cut spending via inflation on purpose to bring down public debt.

He 100% does not have to do this.

He is chosing to empoverish people for his own ambitions.

Agreed - the fuel duty cut is a sop to the Road Haulage and Farming lobbies who are mainly Tory voters/supporters. OMG

I understand then UK is in debt -like lots of countries. And it needs paying back. I also understand that interest is added.
But why not pay it back over a longer time period, to save financial pain to almost everyone?
It’s like me getting a loan for 10 grand over two years or ten years. Paying it back over ten years means more interest in the long run but makes it affordable for me to live more comfortably.
We’re in an unprecedented situation.

As someone else said, we didn’t stop paying back the debts from WW2 until recently.

Sunaks plan did absolutely nothing to help me, although the 5 pence discount on fuel will help haulage companies a little bit.

Give it 12- 18 months when the economy will stagnate, Sunak will be forced

to do more to help people out.

@Hearwego

I understand then UK is in debt -like lots of countries. And it needs paying back. I also understand that interest is added. But why not pay it back over a longer time period, to save financial pain to almost everyone? It’s like me getting a loan for 10 grand over two years or ten years. Paying it back over ten years means more interest in the long run but makes it affordable for me to live more comfortably. We’re in an unprecedented situation.

As someone else said, we didn’t stop paying back the debts from WW2 until recently.

Sunaks plan did absolutely nothing to help me, although the 5 pence discount on fuel will help haulage companies a little bit.

Give it 12- 18 months when the economy will stagnate, Sunak will be forced

to do more to help people out.

Its actually worse than you think.

The poverty he is causing by choice will cause material long-term health and socio-economic problems for millions of children.

Those children will be sicker and poorer over time.

So in the end, we (the taxpayer) will pay even more as they will earn less, and will use the NHS even more.

Using inflation to reduce the size of the "state" is the goal here. By not increading spending in education they are looking at a huge real terms cut. Similar issues with the the courts (which have been massively under-funded).

Nobody should be fooled by his PR and Marketing. He is an ideologue, and a bad one at that.

Well the conservatives made a choice back in 2010 to bring in austerity.
Sunak could have done so much more to help out working and lower income families.

People won’t be able to afford the basics. Food. Heat their homes. Put fuel in their cars.
They won’t afford luxuries like going out to restaurants, buying goods. This is all money that goes back to the government.

The economy will shrink. Everyone can see this but seemingly the government doesn’t want to listen.

Carers can’t even afford to put fuel in their cars to do home visits. Meaning that elderly people won’t be able to be cared for in their own homes and will end up in care homes/ community hospitals. Costing the NHS even more money.

@Blossomtoes you haven't bloody told me anything
But if they were so much better they would be elected more wouldn't they
Its called credible opposition

@Burgoo

I agree and at the same time someone has to pay for the past 2-3 years. Its shit and I have no idea how we get out of this mess (we can't keep spending our way out of it but austerity doesn't work either). Tax corporations and it'll just get passed onto customers anyway. Interestingly, over the past two years people praised furlough, wat-out-to-help-out and the money give-aways that Sunak was offering. Now we have to pay it back and people are upset.

We don't get anything for nothing. There is always a catch. The public can't accept this or are stupidly thinking money grows on trees.

Many of the public didn’t use the furlough scheme, because they worked through the pandemic. (Nor did many of them use the Eat Out scheme, because they were still too worried about Covid).

So I’d say many would have a right to be a little peeved, that they are being financially penalised for something they never used.
But on the whole I think people can understand the need for paying those things back.

But that isn’t the core of where people are going to be hit financially. NI rises (that we were promised wouldn’t happen), fuel increases, energy increases etc the inflation of things (and wages not increasing enough if at all, to cover that inflation) is what’s hitting people hard. Something the government could do far more to control and impact, but choose not to.

Currently the cost of HS2 stands at between £72 - £98 billion. Estimated to cost £116 billion in total (but likely more). Tax payer money, that in my eyes, could’ve been used to help things like the NHS/Social Care rather than squeezing even more money out of folk in NI.
That project was given the final green light in Feb 2020, right as Covid hit. Why? We went into lockdown a few weeks later! Construction started in September 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. Why continue when it was clear we’d been hit by a pandemic and the economy was already suffering?!

There’s other things they can do to lessen the impact on working folk, like introducing a Windfall tax for the energy companies who are benefitting in the billions. Nope. They choose not to do that either.

It’s one thing paying back money that was used to help people out in tough times. Fine. But what we’re paying for is rapidly rising inflation costs and the impact of those could be mitigated far better by the government. And that’s why people are pissed off.

[quote worriedatthistime]@Blossomtoes you haven't bloody told me anything
But if they were so much better they would be elected more wouldn't they
Its called credible opposition
[/quote]
Here you go. This is why.

The reason there have been so many Tory governments are twofold. FPTP is one, the other is that the media is hugely influential in election results, that’s why in 1997 it was proclaimed that “It was the Sun that won it”. The mainstream media backed Blair.

@Blossomtoes has it spot on. I have no idea how labour can ever get in again unless the media do a massive swing and FPTP is changed.

Just support from the mass media would do it. If The Sun and Mirror got behind Labour, as sure as night follows day we’d have a Labour government.

I think we would need the Mail too.

The Mirror is already more labour.

The books will never get balanced again, well maybe in the next 300;yrs, I would not want his job,it’s just moving money around & it’s one hell of a headache, we all suffer & that’s guaranteed some more than others, it’s his job to lay out plans, it’s our job to keep within if possible, we all know it hurts, & we scream & shout,

I can't see the Sun newspaper changing to vote Labour as they did in 97. I don't buy it or read it online but ( I'm being honest here ! ) I was in a supermarket cafe yesterday and a copy was on the table , it was mostly loads about the latest Royal tour and Kate's many outfits and Ukraine but the readers emails they printed were generally in support of the government and I had the impression they still support them
They all might have the odd dig occasionally ( I do read the Daily Mail online as it's not behind a pay wall ) but any election will have the usual suspects supporting the conservatives next time.
The daily mirror didn't like Corbyn that much , but they have always been Labour supporters.

[quote Zonder]@Blossomtoes has it spot on. I have no idea how labour can ever get in again unless the media do a massive swing and FPTP is changed.[/quote]
They can't.

Only a Lib Dem - Labour coalition can win.

Starmer seems onboard with this which is progress.

In order to govern, you have to beat FPTP.

Thats all that should really matter now.

I’m sure Sunak is much cleverer than me. But what if he was to take the brunt of the high energy prices , say £800 per household and we pay it back over say 10 years?
Atleast it won’t ,be such a shock to people when in a weeks time it all goes up.
Gas prices will drop again in a few years presumably.

@Zonder

I think we would need the Mail too.

Blair didn’t need it. Mail readers are a lost cause.

The reason there have been so many Tory governments are twofold. FPTP is one, the other is that the media is hugely influential in election results, that’s why in 1997 it was proclaimed that “It was the Sun that won it”. The mainstream media backed Blair.

Whilst I agree with the thrust of this argument, I have to point out in the interest of historical accuracy that that Sun headline was in fact in response to the Tory win in 1992 and was actually "It's The Sun Wot Won It".

@Hearwego

I’m sure Sunak is much cleverer than me. But what if he was to take the brunt of the high energy prices , say £800 per household and we pay it back over say 10 years? Atleast it won’t ,be such a shock to people when in a weeks time it all goes up. Gas prices will drop again in a few years presumably.

Or the fucker could just do a windfall tax on the energy companies and we wouldn't have a government loan we didn't want and didn't ask for. Or he could limit the increase like the French.